Writings, Musings and Scratchings

Blog

Ours is a dog-neighbourhood. We have two, our neighbour has one, as do the people behind him and the ones beside them.

So, I was surprised to see a black cat on our back fence last week. I was sipping coffee and reading a book when its movement caught my attention.

The image of it stalking the length of our fence before dropping into the yard behind us has stayed with me. I can’t help but admire its audacity.

Advent invites us to live in liminal space, in between a future promise and the current reality. Richard Rohr asserts that ‘we have to allow ourselves to be drawn into sacred space, into liminality (because) all transformation takes place here.’

The black cat on our fence was inhabiting liminal space. She knew the dangers, but did not let fear divert her. As she walked, she was paying attention, using her finely attuned senses to guide her. And she kept on-track, navigating her way along our fence towards whatever hope or promise lured her through dog-land.

It isn’t easy to live in liminal space and there is much to divert our intention to do so, especially in these weeks before Christmas, but Advent calls us to ‘allow ourselves to be drawn out of “business as usual” and remain patiently on the “threshold” (limen, in Latin) where we are betwixt and between the familiar and the completely unknown’ (Richard Rohr).

‘Have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves … Don’t search for the answers, which cannot be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer.’

This piece of advice contains Advent themes: patience, waiting on answers by living the questions and hope for future resolution.

I don’t generally listen to talk-back radio, but yesterday, in only five minutes of a discussion about men and women sharing household labour, I heard a man live into his answer.

He rang in to say that he couldn’t understand why his wife didn’t always react well to his attempts to help her around the house. The guest speaker replied that perhaps he could re-frame his approach: rather than offering to help, he could ask his wife what he could do to share the work.

But, he replied, he was more than willing to help, why did she not understand that. The guest speaker tried again. By offering to help, he was implying that the work was hers and perhaps, she was failing in it. They lived together, the household was theirs, by offering to share the work he would be saying he understood that.

He started to speak again, but then paused, and in that moment of silence the listening audience heard the penny drop. His next words told us that he could see the distinction.

It was an Advent moment, for both of us. Clearly, his question troubled him, he had been living it and yesterday, on public radio, he lived into the answer. And the answer surprised him, not something he could do, but a different way to think about it. A way to re-frame the question.

As for me, I witnessed the coming of light into darkness. I heard the birth of understanding and insight, made all the more wondrous because I did hear it rather than see it.

Advent is a time of preparation and way-clearing. It is a time to de-clutter. This is a tough call when everything around us calls us to come, to buy, to add more.

I suffer from piles: I let things and stuff pile up around me. The desk where I write is frequently covered with books and papers, lists and notes. My sewing cabinet is always open and littered with patterns and fabrics, pins and threads. The coffee table beside my chair in the living room is piled high with books and journals and things to which I need/should/must pay attention.

I know that this external clutter has a flow-on effect internally. Perhaps it’s no surprise that the higher the piles, the more likely I am to miss the exit off the freeway (which I did twice last week).

So, in preparation for Advent, I’ve cleared out my study. As I type this, the window in front of me is clean, I can see the desktop, only my sewing machine sits on the sewing cabinet, and a candle is burning. I still have a busy week ahead, but this external order calms me.

…
Make a joyful noise to the Lord, all the earth;
break forth into joyous song and sing praises.

From Psalm 98, this one of the Scriptures from the Revised Common Lectionary for this coming Sunday. Inspired by it, I looked to see what I might find on TedTalks under the topic ‘sing’. I’ve got to say the choices are not overwhelming, but these three claim my attention for different reasons:

Will Hewitt committed himself to sing for fifteen minutes every day for a year and did it. He discovered, among other things, that the world was already alive with singing and once he entered the practice, singing, making a noise, connected him to himself, the world around him and the world beyond. Watch it with others and allow some time to reflect on his findings.

How are we to explain the 2016 AFL grand final win? The seventh-placed Western Bulldogs have defeated the minor premiers, Sydney, by 22 points.

Shall we put it down to:

Belief
Tenacity
The Coach

or …

The Boys
The Bont
The Bye

All of these, and more, will be under the microscope and certainly, all have played their part, but even the commentators recognise there’s also something more mystical at play in this ‘miraculous, fairy-tale’ win, the ‘dream-come-true’.

Let us then include:

Timeliness
Momentum
Longing
Fidelity

The Western Bulldogs have a strong band of loyal, faithful supporters who have wished and willed and sighed and prayed for this win. This year, and especially during this last month of finals games, those supporters have been joined by countless others: well-wishers, dreamers, sympathetic second-team supporters (like me), and onlookers. Together, we have held our collective breath, crossed our fingers, whispered and shouted our desire and imagined this win.

And all of the above have prevailed; truly a quantum entanglement.

Western Bulldogs fans watching on a big screen outside the Sun Theatre in Yarraville celebrate their team’s win over Sydney Swans in the AFL Grand Final. Picture: Andrew Henshaw

Further into the interview, talking about differences in language, he said, ‘pain is never exhausted by language’ and invited his hearers to a stance of curiosity over issues of pain.

This word, ‘curiosity’, in Irish includes the idea of ‘wonder watch’. Wonder watch first puts me in mind of wonderful things – a magnificent sunrise/set, glorious colour, but Ó Tuama posed the question,

How can we observe pain and argument with wonder?

He called us to a spirituality that respects pain.

Thinking about this interview afterwards, I found myself composing my own Wonder Watch. What are the things that stir the snake-like coil of fear in me? What causes fear to stir, raise its head, prepare to strike?

What stirs the fear in you?

Let us seek to observe our fear with wonder and maintain a Wonder Watch in the face of it.

Yellow flowers have sprung up in recent weeks along the Western Highway and Deer Park Bypass. This afternoon, I noticed at least three different varieties: small wattle bushes, clumps of bright yellow flowers standing out against the grasses and tiny flowers on long stems waving in the breeze.

I suppose the wattle bushes have been planted, but the other two have simply sprung up along the roadside and in the median strips, unbidden and largely unremarked.

When the sun is out, they shine and nod at the passing traffic. More than that, they serve as a kind of resistance to the landscape with its concrete and every-spreading development. For instance, they are prolific along the fence that borders the new Ravenhall Prison site currently under construction.

They were here before us and will continue long after we have gone, these humble flowers; not a ‘host of golden daffodils’, but all the same, ‘fluttering and dancing in the breeze’.